Vettel Dominates At Spa

Sebastian Vettel returns from the annual F1 summer break and wins his fifth race of the season, without breaking a sweat

Vettel Extends Championship Lead During the summer break, there was one telling topic of discussion: Sebastian Vettel’s chances of winning his fourth successive drivers’ title. For him to be denied, the three men in contention needed to step it up, starting the Belgian GP itself. Ferrari needed to up their game and prop up Fernando Alonso. Kimi Raikkonen needed to qualify his Lotus better. And Mercedes needed to provide some winning consistency to Lewis Hamilton.

Some of it happened with Alonso regaining his form and Lewis snatching pole again. A few other things didn’t happen: primarily Alonso and Kimi still qualifying poorly thanks to the rain. And, later Lewis went backwards from the first lap of the race, recovering enough to finish third. But none of it mattered for Vettel was just too quick.

Vettel overtook Lewis by the end of the Kemmel Straight which is essentially the third corner of the circuit. From there, he took a 2.8 seconds lead by lap two and extended it to 4.8 seconds by the sixth lap. When Alonso slotted into P2 ahead of the Mercedes, Vettel was gaining a tenth every lap and on fresher tyres it was nearly a second. True, Spa is quite an aerodynamic circuit and Red Bull was in awesome form. But it took someone as quick as Vettel to wring every ounce of performance from the car, even as his teammate Mark Webber could only finish fifth, behind Alonso and two Mercedes cars. What’s more, going into the last eight races, Vettel looks to be in ominous form.

The Championship Battle The biggest loser on the day was Kimi Raikkonen who retired after his front brakes failed. It brought an end to his record-making 27-consecutive points’ finishes. What’s more he also finished 38 races on the trot. His last retirement was in Germany in 2009 when he drove for Ferrari. But his poor luck after so long cost him dearly. He is now 63 points behind Vettel and down to fourth. Lewis is still only five points ahead with 139 and Alonso is now the proper challenger for the world title. He has 151 points but is miles off Vettel, who is leading with 197.

Red Bull look comfortable at the top of the constructors’ race with 312 points. Mercedes are second with 235 and Felipe Massa’s poor run is costing Ferrari, who are trailing in third with 218. Lotus are fourth with 187, but it is the fight for fifth place that is most intriguing. Pastor Maldonado spoiled Paul di Resta’s race and his retirement meant that McLaren (65) have finally managed to get ahead of Force India (61), as Jenson Button gave them a season-high finish of sixth.

Greenpeace Protests Formula One is no stranger to controversy and there have been quite a few recent issues that have nothing to do directly with the sport itself. The circus’ annual visit to Bahrain is always a point of debate. Meanwhile there have been roadblocks to listing the sport’s ownership on the Singapore stock exchange, while Bernie Ecclestone has been in the news for corruption charges. At other times, it is mostly about team allegations, rule breaches, tyres exploding, circuits not paying their annual fees and drivers having random fun.

For the first time in a long while, at the 2013 Belgian GP, it was about the environment and how F1 is contributing to its destruction. 35 Greenpeace protestors descended on Spa, literally from the air, in a carefully planned hit on the race sponsor Shell. They took the aerial route to descend on the grandstands and hurl their banners, and bought tickets worth 1000 Euros to get on the podium. They even planted a hoarding at the podium without anyone noticing it. It was done to protest against the oil-major’s intended drilling in the Arctic. There’s every chance their message got across.

Chetan Narula is the author of History of Formula One: The Circus comes to India.